


Omnis Gutta Sanguinis

by MaK



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, pale relationships!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaK/pseuds/MaK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat crawls into Kanaya's bed at some hour of the day and continues to whine about his nightmares. </p><p>Kanaya only cares so much but, as a temporary moirail, she has to at least make an effort to care. It fails, but it's an effort nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Omnis Gutta Sanguinis

**Author's Note:**

> something not written on my phone!!! yay

It’s some time way too earlier to be alive and living, but you wake up enough to acknowledge Karkat when he crawls in next to you in your recuperacoon. It’d be far too tiring to actually push him out or embrace his entrance, so you do neither. He moves awkwardly through the sludge to lie close to you, but not to seem like he actually wants to. If you were to ask, you’re sure he’d say something along the lines of, “This thing is too fucking small.” But, you don’t, and he doesn’t feel the need to explain himself, so you just let him lay there as you attempt to go back to sleep.

After about ten minutes, weariness begins to set over you heavily once again. Before it can successfully hit you, though, Karkat asks, “Can you turn the fucking light off, Kanaya? How the fuck do you sleep when everything is so goddamn bright?”

“You’ve asked that a handful of times, Karkat,” you mumble, and turn swiftly to face him. You keep your eyes shut – you don’t want to see whatever tears he’s brought with him or whatever made him come here. Regardless, you know he’s studying your features for anything. You’re positive the only thing he can see is how tired you are. “I got used to it,” you finish.

“Right,” he mumbles. There’s a silence again, and you grab it quickly. You’d think yourself a shitty moirail if it weren’t so early, or so late, whatever, and you weren’t so tired. He probably isn’t complaining anyway.

Fortunately, you do drift off. But, as you did expect, not for long; Karkat has a lot on his mind, apparently. He starts it off with a simple sentence, though, “I had a nightmare.”

“Would you like to talk about it?” the conversation is almost routine. He’s been having them so often now it’s almost making you worry. Almost. If he’d actually sleep in this sludge maybe they wouldn’t occur so violently or frequently. You know they wouldn’t. But he’s determined to be against that, for whatever personal reason.

“Uh, kinda…” without looking at him, you can tell he’s biting his lip and sighing through his nose. Before continuing, he wraps himself neatly around you; arms crossing over your breasts and upper back, legs straddling your hip. “It was, uh, Gamzee. From a doomed timeline, y’know.” 

The bite you deliver to your lip actually stings and you have to flinch before speaking. “Of course I know, Karkat. You should have let me kill him.”

“This is a different Gamzee.”

“They’re all the same.”

“Whatever, listen, okay?”

“Do continue. Fuel my rage and fuel my vigor to hunt that blood thirsty troll… no, I’m done. Continue.” His look of frustration stops you. You would have gone on for another sweep or two if he’d let you.

Karkat rolls his eyes before speaking. If Gamzee were willing to walk freely around the meteor, you’re sure he’d go to him and not to you. It wouldn’t hurt, not at all; you understand these whole messes of quadrants better than you probably think you do. You’d almost rather that Gamzee show his goddamn face. “Okay, okay, so: John was fucking… dead, along with, I think, Nepeta and Vriska? I don’t know. It was weird. Gamzee had those fucking… clubs and they were all fucking… yeah.” He breathes and continues, “He told me in that crazy fucking voice of his how they all bragged too much. ‘Stupid motherfuckers ain’t got no sense of person.’ What the fuck? I know Vriska talked shit all the time, but John and Nepeta…? I can get John. The dude is fucking annoying…” Karkat drifts away from the sentence. 

You wait patiently.

He doesn’t continue, so you nudge him.

“Right, sorry. John. No, Nepeta? Yeah. Nepeta. I don’t know why she was there. I think we were on earth or Jade’s world, or something? There wasn’t much snow, so…” He sighs again. “Anyway, Gamzee was, uh, walking towards me speaking some stupid fucking words about that stupid ass fucking cult he follows. Who the bloody fuck is the double angel of death and why does he give a shit? Why do I give a shit?”

“You don’t.”

“You don’t know that, Kanaya. Shut the fuck up.” Karkat stops suddenly and says, sadly, “No, don’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Go on.”

“Gamzee raised up that shit stained green club, or whatever, and… I mean, it was fucking bathed in blood, okay? Like… green, red, blue, fucking… all of it! The entire fucking hemospectrum was on that single fucking stick!” While he starts shouting, his voice cracks. You finally open your eyes and move over to hug him back. His tears are running down his cheeks and he tucks his chin in between your shoulder and neck, teeth lightly chapping your skin as he continues his story. “All of the fucking blood! Kanaya, fucking, all of… Feferi’s, yours, all of it. Every single fucking drop was…!” There’s a harsh crack in his throat and he coughs.

You hug him tighter. It’s not vivid, not at all, but you can understand his sudden fear. You wonder how Nepeta put up with always being afraid of her moirail, yet never scared to flee? It’d be a time consuming task to figure all that out. You let him go on again.

Karkat attempts to calm himself by breathing heavily. It’s working, sort of, but not as well as he’d want it to. He looks into your eyes, and you look at the red filling out in his, and his tears continue to come. He’s practically shouting at you as he says, “He raised that fucking club and fucking brought it down! I’m his fucking moirail! He was going to fucking kill me, Kanaya, and he didn’t even give a single fucking shit! I almost fucking died and… and, Gamzee… Gamzee, that stupid fucking moron!”

“You have poor taste in your quadrants, Karkat,” you say, quietly. Absently, you stroke his hair as he presses his whole body against yours. It’d be sexual if he weren’t so upset.

“I know, I fucking know… Trust me, I fucking know.”

“Is there more?”

“No, no.” He coughs as he tries to breathe once more. “It tapped my fucking skull and then, yeah. I woke up. I came here.”

You hum in response and kiss his forehead. There’s a black outline there, one he’ll wipe off later, but right now he just shoves his face into the sludge and shuffles his head beneath your chin. His legs curl up around your hips and he’s basically a ball encasing you as he folds even further into himself.

Rising slightly out of the position, he raises his head to ask you, “What have you been dreaming about?” Then, he returns to his home in the sopor with his ears slightly above it all to hear your words.

“Not many things. Nothing as terrifying as that.”

He nods and his nose scrapes against your chest.

“I saw my lusus the other day, though. In an old memory. I was younger – and my sense of fashion then was disgusting – and she was livelier. I stayed away from them – her and I – though.”

He gurgles up, “Why?”

“I don’t want her to know how I am.” You sigh and close your eyes. The vampire status has gotten beyond boring, and almost torturous, because god forbid you have a night’s (day’s?) of sleep without having to stare into the own light of your eyelid. “She doesn’t need to see her grub glowing with a hole in her abdomen.”

Karkat nods and there isn’t a rush of understanding and certainty. You’re not feeling anything and you know he’d rather be with Gamzee and he knows you’d rather be asleep, to suffer in your own brightness. It’s mutual knowledge between the both of you so neither of you say it, that’d be air wasted, and he just burrows deeper into himself. 

 

In what you’ve recognized to be the morning, his fist is lodged into the hole in your gut and he’s more sprawled out now, his toenails digging into your shin. 

He doesn’t wake up when you nudge him, so you awkwardly crawl over his resting form and flop out of the recuperacoon. There’s a disgusting, “splat” like sound as you fall against the metal floor and probably bruise both of your thighs and knees in the process. 

You’re still so, so tired, but you suppose there’s more work to be done than not on these restless days. Everyone’s leader for the passed eternity is finally quiet and asleep, and you bet that this will keep quite a few people happy.


End file.
